How to Clean Your Scopes Lenses

Mike Fellon

Keeping your scopes in a good condition is crucial for their longevity. One of the most important things you should do is to clean their lenses so they do not get damaged. Also, clean lenses will provide you a better view of your target, it is as simple as that, dirty optics affect image quality.  There are a lot of ways to clean lenses, but here are the ones which are the best.

Avoid unnecessary cleaning as you can actually damage the optics. Glass is relatively hard and durable and using incorrect chemicals can do more harm than good.

air blaster

First of all here are some dos and don’ts.

  • Don’t touch the lenses, that will leave fingerprints and probably oil(from your own skin)
  • Don’t use compressed air
  • Don’t blow with your own lungs to clean the lenses, probably there will be some saliva as well
  • Don’t use acetone or household windows cleaners
  • Do use air blaster instead of blowing
  • Do put the caps on the lenses every time you are not using them

Soft Brush/Air Blaster

Keep in mind that having dust on your lenses is normal, no matter how good care are you taking of them. Dust is just everywhere around us and cannot be avoided.

The easiest thing you can do is to clean the dust/dry dirt from your lenses with a soft brush or air blaster. You can do that as often as you like as there is no risk for the lenses whatsoever, especially with the air blaster. Compressed air is not a good idea, please avoid, unless no other option is present. A little dust is not going to affect viewing quality, so you do not have to worry about it.

Lens Cleaning Solution + Lens Tissue

Unless there are fingerprints or oily smudges, generally you do not have to do anything else that the brush/air blaster.

But if there are, it is still easy to clean your lens even in the field. It is important to have the right tools for that, of course.

You would better opt for quality cleaning solutions/tissues, as low quality/non-suitable ones can damage your lenses and a quality scope usually costs a lot of money, so it’s simply not worth the risk.

You can clean your lenses in 3 simple steps.

  1. Remove as much dirt and dust as you can with an air blaster/soft brush
  2. Apply the special cleaning solution on the tissue/cloth – better than applying directly on the lens
  3. Clean with circular motions with gentle pressure. Start from the center and go outward

Find more information about choosing a rifle scope on our homepage.